34 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
contrasted with chemical, because in all living acts, 
whether plastic or metabolic, change of composition is 
essential; Schwann’s word metabolic may be still used 
for vital action in which secretion of chemically different 
matters from the pabulum is the prominent feature. 
Finally, it may be asked, What do we gain by substi- 
tuting the adjective protoplasmic for vital, and defining as 
it were in a circle, vitality as the property of protoplasm, 
while the latter is described simply as matter in the living 
state? To this may be replied, Much; for thereby we 
avoid several sources of ambiguity and error, and at the 
same time place biology in more correct relation with 
chemistry in its present state. By the above definitions, 
we emphasise the fact of the residence of vitality in 
protoplasm alone throughout all nature; and we remove 
to its proper place the boundary line between chemical 
and living action. For it is now formally admitted the 
distinction between the inorganic and organic chemistry 
of our text books has no existence. It was in fact drawn 
on the erroneous assumption that synthesis was an 
essentially vital process and quite outside the sphere of 
the chemist—an assumption supported by the lack of skill 
of our chemists sixty years ago. Now, however, so many 
synthetic products of vital action have been made in the 
laboratory, and Schunck having stated at the British 
Association, in 1887, that we may “confidently antici- 
pate that all the most important organic bodies, acids, 
alkaloids and neutral substances, will in the course of 
time be obtained in a similar manner,’ it becomes 
necessary to recognise in the use of terms that there is no 
distinction whatever between the chemistry of mineral 
bodies and that of the dead products of vital action, to 
which the name of organic chemistry has hitherto been 
given. ‘To avoid misconception, it will, I think, be better 

